Making the right move

“Good regulation is a good thing” is the trite introduction to the government’s red tape challenge, before saying we have too much of the other sort. The proposition is that reducing the quantity of regulation is the answer. This is myopic because if quantity is one possible burden on business, so is poor quality law. Poor quality is not about political or policy disagreements, but simply the production of badly-drafted law that is difficult to understand, because it is too complex or simply unclear.

Employment law will be used to demonstrate the problem because it is now under the microscope but the principles discussed apply across the legislative spectrum.

The best example of poor quality law is the discipline and grievance procedures introduced in 2004. They caused so much litigation havoc over the meaning of a “grievance” and so many problems in practice they became entirely discredited and were repealed in 2009. Maternity and paternity rules have become increasingly complex because of continuous accretion,